


An Honest Man

by ama



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Established Relationship, Families of Choice, Flirting, Fluff, Friendship, Gay Male Character, M/M, Post-Canon, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-16
Updated: 2017-06-16
Packaged: 2018-11-14 16:45:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11212113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ama/pseuds/ama
Summary: "Ask him to dance, doc."





	An Honest Man

Every year, Joe took the train up to Pennsylvania to have Thanksgiving with his family. Not his real family, who hadn’t spoken to him since he moved down to Louisiana, but some motley combination of the Guarneres, Heffrons, and Spinas. Then one year he caught the flu three days before Thanksgiving. Joe hadn’t _wanted_ to cancel, but when Gene had forced him to stay in bed for two days and saw no improvement, he had called up Babe and told him Joe wouldn’t be coming.

He hadn’t been totally surprised two weeks later when he picked up the telephone to hear Bill’s voice demanding a ride home from the train station, but he had enjoyed seeing the look of shocked delight spread over Joe’s face.

The boys arrived on a Friday night and planned to leave Monday noon. Naturally, Friday and Saturday involved lots of food and booze. Gene was able to keep up the first two days, but on Sunday, when he realized they planned to keep it up for another night, he gracefully excused himself, citing work in the morning. Besides, he thought it would be good to give the Pennsylvania boys some time to themselves. Joe usually went back north twice a year, once for Thanksgiving and once in the spring or summer; Gene joined him for the latter visit, but he knew Joe liked to have some time with Babe and Bill especially. Bill was his best friend in the world (save Malarkey), and Babe was his closest gay friend—Joe didn’t often admit that he needed to talk, but secretly he did, and Babe and Bill were the best candidates.

So Gene went to bed alone on Sunday night. It was a cold night, and the bed was cold without Joe. When he woke up again just after one in the morning he was wrapped up in blankets like a cocoon, and it took a few minutes to muster up his willpower and extract himself. Yawning, he made his way towards the kitchen, where Joe, Babe, Bill, and Spina were still sitting at the table, beer bottles and whiskey glasses cluttering the tabletop. A round of laughter sent them reeling as Gene entered the room, and he smiled to himself and leaned against the doorframe for a moment, meaning to just observe the camaraderie.

“Hey, doc!” Babe called. “Have a beer!”

He held up his own half-empty bottle but Gene waved him off and walked further into the room. The other visitors greeted him, and finally when he was standing behind Joe’s chair, Joe turned around and gave him that slow-breaking smile he loved so much.

“Hey,” he said in his low, raspy voice, rich with warmth and alcohol. “C’mere.”

He put an arm around Gene’s waist and patted his lap. Gene remained standing and glanced quickly at the table. Three years ago Bill had hardly been able to look at the two of them together, and he and Joe had made sure to keep a few inches of space between them at all times. Lately Bill had seemed more comfortable—no doubt thanks to Babe and Ralph’s influence—but he didn’t want to push it.

“Joe Toye, you are three sheets to the wind,” he said, dancing around the invitation.

“Two and a half,” Joe countered. “You don’t want to sit with me?”

His eyes were wide and dark and his face was curled in a kind of grin that, on other occasions, had made Gene drag him right to the bedroom. This time he deliberated, and Joe quirked an eyebrow when he didn’t respond.

“Come on, doc,” Bill laughed. “Don’t make the man beg.”

“All right,” Gene consented. He sat on Joe’s lap and Joe immediately pulled him close against his chest. “How you boys doin’?” he asked, voice still fuzzy around the edges. “Any sign of slowin’ down?”

“You kidding, doc?” Bill grinned. “They don’t call us wild for nothin’.”

“They only call _you_ wild, Bill.”

“Hey!”

“Yeah, you’re right, _Babe_ is the nickname of a hellraiser,” Gene shot back.

They all laughed again and Joe’s arm tightened around him. Gene leaned back and let the contentment wash over him for a moment as the conversation picked up again. After a few minutes his eyelids started to feel heavy, and he curled up against Joe’s shoulder. Joe ran a hand up and down his arm.

“’S cold in there all by myself,” Gene murmured. “You planning on joining me anytime soon?”

“Mm,” Joe breathed. “Soon.”

He started to drop kisses below Gene’s ear and the side of his neck, soft little touches that made him squirm away—half because they tickled and half because he was embarrassed that Joe had apparently forgotten they were people around. Just because Bill didn’t mind a little hugging didn’t mean Gene was willing to advertise his private life.

“You watch yourself,” he chastised. Joe nipped at his ear and Gene jumped. That was when he realized Joe wasn’t wearing his prosthetic, and whatever retort he was planning on making was lost in exasperation. “Joe, where is your leg?” he demanded.

“Bastogne somewhere.”

“Nobody asked you, Heffron.”

“It was pinching,” Joe said plaintively.

“But where _is_ it?”

“’S over there,” Joe said, waving his hand vaguely. Gene craned his neck and saw the prosthetic limb sitting on the floor near the couch, looking suspiciously like it had been tossed there. He shook his head and settled back in Joe’s lap.

“One day you’re going to lose that thing for real,” he warned. “And this will be the next to go.”

He poked the side of Joe’s head, and Joe responded by stretching up to kiss him on the chin, to uproarious laughter.

“Hey Joe, when are you going to make an honest man out of this one, eh?” Bill teased. “He’s nagging you like a wife already.”

“Screw you, Gonorrhea.”

“He’s got a point,” Ralph grinned. “Getting on, what, five years now and no ring? Sounds pretty scandalous.”

“The scandal’s half the fun,” Babe said.

“Nothing scandalous here,” Joe said, and hidden from sight beneath the table his hand slipped under Gene’s shirt to touch the bare skin of his stomach, raising goosebumps all around it. “Got hold of a good man, is all.”

“Okay,” Gene said. He could feel his cheeks turning red. He didn’t like being on the receiving end of compliments all that much, especially not with everyone looking at him perched on Joe’s lap. He stood. “Time for you to head to bed.”

“Yes ma’am,” Joe laughed. He leaned forward to pick his beer bottle up off the table, but Gene reached out and covered his hand with his own.

“Try again,” he ordered.

“Yeah, doc.”

“Better.” Gene pulled the beer bottle from his grasp and gulped down the last lukewarm sip. Then he held out his arm, and Joe grasped it tightly and pulled himself into a standing position. He wobbled, but they had this pretty down pat, and Gene readjusted their arms so Joe could lean against him as they walked. “Night, boys,” he called over his shoulder, and together he and Joe made their way to the bedroom.

“They’re right, you know,” Joe said as he climbed into bed.

“Bout what?” Gene asked, distracted. “Us being scandalous?”

“We’re not that scandalous.”

He said it in a dismissive way, and Gene knew what he meant. He sat on the bed and ran his hand over the blanket with a dopey little smile on his face. He was thinking about the way Joe had whined all the way through his bout of the flu, and how he always had to make three trips to the grocery store because he never made a list, and how he was comfortable enough in this little nowhere town to flirt outrageously with the fifty-eight year old server at their favorite diner.

“No, we’re not,” he agreed quietly. “Least not after five years. I s’pose we’re an old married couple by now, huh?”

“That’s what I mean,” Joe said with serious eyes. “I would.”

“Would what?”

“Marry you.”

Gene stared at him for a moment, trying to make out his face in the silvery moonlight, and then he huffed out a laugh.

“Why not? Father Jacob’s half blind anyway—which one of us wears the dress?”

“I mean it.” Joe edged closer on the bed. “I’m not joking, Gene. I’d really do it—I’d get down on one knee—”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

“And tell you how you’d already made me happier than anybody ever fucking has before—”

“Joe—”

“—right when I thought I’d never be that happy again, and I’d ask you to marry me. Then I’d stand up in front of God and all our friends and anybody else who asked—”

“Joe, stop,” Gene tried again.

His cheeks were on fire again and his innards were squirming with embarrassment. Joe didn’t know of course, _couldn’t_ know how once or twice Gene had seen other couples out in public, straight couples who could hold each other and kiss each other and talk about themselves openly, and thought wistfully that _if only they could have that_ … it was a foolish thought, he knew that, which is why he had never dwelt on it, and to have the concept trotted out like a joke made him feel like an idiot.

But Joe didn’t stop and he didn’t laugh. He covered Gene’s hand with his own.

“And I’d tell ’em that I’m going to spend however many years I’ve got left loving you, and providing for you, and protecting you, and doing my fuckin’ best to make you as happy as you made me.”

He wasn’t joking.

Gene stared at him for a long minute until he felt, inexplicably, that he might cry, and then he looked away.

“Protect me,” he said. “Toye, what the hell are you protecting me from in Maurice, Louisiana?”

Joe shifted closer and dropped his head. For a moment he was quiet, his dry lips brushing against the skin of Gene’s neck.

“Alligators,” he said finally, and he opened his mouth and sucked at Gene’s collarbone. Gene swallowed.

“Alligators.”

“Mmhm.” Joe pushed both hands underneath his shirt. “We’ve got three good legs between us and I’m going to keep it that way.”

“I love you,” Gene gasped out as Joe pushed his shirt off all the way and stretched him back over the bed.

“Yeah.”

“We’ve got company.”

“It’s a good thing we’re quiet, then, isn’t it?” Joe whispered. It was true, both of them usually were quiet in bed—but of course the moment he said that, and punctuated it with the curl of his tongue against Gene’s throat, Gene felt the need to moan. He turned his head to the side.

“Fuck,” he mumbled.

“I love it when you start swearing at me,” Joe said with a low chuckle.

“I thought you liked me honest.”

“I like you every way.”

-

There was more to it, of course. But for the most part, that was it. That was how Gene ended up getting married seven months later, at a June wedding held in his own backyard.

It was a small affair; on the groom’s side, Ralph Spina and Merriell Shelton were invited, and on the other groom’s side were Bill and Frances Guarnere, Babe Heffron, and Don Malarkey. The event was catered by their next door neighbor, Marietta Adams, and officiated by her daughter Alice, who gave a truly inspired riff on the traditional Catholic text that still, somehow, managed to make half the guests sniffle.

It was a hot night, and the few who had worn jackets stripped them off as soon as the food came out; the Philly guests took one bite of Marietta’s gumbo and started sweating, and Merriell laughed at them while gulping it down like water. Gene kept staring around the yard in a kind of dizzy of happiness, and Joe kept breaking into song, much to everyone’s dismay. Bill begged Gene to intervene, but he didn’t say anything. Truth be told, he liked hearing Joe sing along to the record player. Sure, his voice wasn’t as good as Ella Fitzgerald’s, but it was his wedding day, wasn’t it?

Sometime after the sun had gone down for good, Gene was sitting on the house steps sipping some of Marietta’s homemade lemonade, and Malarkey wandered over to stand by him just as “A Sunday Kind of Love” started playing. Gene sighed happily without thinking about it; he loved this song. His eyes sought Joe and rested on him, and his heart softened.

“Ask him to dance, doc.”

Gene looked up and saw Malarkey grinning down at him.

“Did you talk to McClung before you came down?” he asked suspiciously.

“No, why?”

“He told me the same thing once.”

“Huh.” Malarkey took a sip from his drink and shoved his hand in his pocket. “Listen, Gene. I’m—I’m really glad you two…”

He trailed off.

“I know,” Gene offered, trying to give him an out, but Malarkey pressed on.

“Me and Joe, we—we’re like brothers, you know. So I know how much this means to him, and it means a lot… you’re a good guy, Eugene, and you’re good for him. And—I wanted to thank you for that.”

Gene looked up at him, but found that Malarkey was staring at his feet. There was something haggard in his face and he suspected that Bastogne was lingering in Malarkey’s mind, but beneath that he could tell that Malarkey was sincere. He was always sincere. That was what dragged him down sometimes, the fact that he cared so damn much. They had that in common. As he watched, he saw Malarkey glance up and spot Joe sitting at the table, and at the sight of his friend, he smiled.

Malarkey loved Joe. They had that in common, too.

“You’re welcome,” Gene said quietly. “And thank you too.”

Malarkey looked at him, smiled wider, and clapped him on the shoulder.

“Did you take his advice?”

“Hm?”

“McClung.”

“Oh. No, I suppose not.”

“Well, you should take mine.”

Gene looked back at Joe. He had his arm around Bill’s shoulders and their heads were bent together, and there was a wide grin on his face as he pointed at Gene with his other hand. He was bragging. Gene could tell even from this distance that he was bragging, and he shook his head and leaned over to turn up the volume on the record player.

 _And my arms need someone_ _  
_ _Someone to enfold..._

“Yeah, I think I will.”


End file.
